Staff Engineer - Hardware Commodity & Vendor Management

LinkedIn; California (MO); Hybrid; USD 136,000 - 221,000; Full time

Job summary

LinkedIn is seeking a Commodity Manager / NPI lead to drive sourcing strategy and cost management for our datacenter hardware portfolio. You will collaborate with engineering, capacity planning, and finance to secure reliable, scalable infrastructure and optimize spend at scale.

You will own negotiations, supplier relationships, and lifecycle management from concept through EOL, influencing hardware architecture and roadmap decisions to ensure availability and cost efficiency.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Supply Chain Management, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related field
• 10+ years of experience in commodity management, vendor management and hardware sourcing or supply chain for datacenter/enterprise
• Experience managing silicon, memory and storage components
• Experience with silicon lifecycles, DRAM/NAND market dynamics and datacenter hardware architecture
• Proven negotiation experience and ability to manage executive level relationships
• Experience leading complex technical programs in compute, storage, or networking hardware
• Experience with analytical skills with ability to model cost, supply and risk tradeoffs
• Experience working with suppliers, contract manufacturers, and global production teams

Responsibilities

• Develop and own the strategy across CPU, GPU, DRAM, NAND, HDD etc. Monitor market trends, silicon transitions, pricing cycles, supply health and technology roadmaps.
• Manage day-to-day and strategic relationships with suppliers across silicon and component vendors. Lead QBRs, roadmap alignment sessions and performance scorecards.
• Secure quarterly and annual supply allocations with commodity vendors, partner with supply planning to ensure accuracy in consumption and forecast to prevent shortages.
• Lead negotiations including pricing, LTAs, volume discounts, rebates. Develop cost models to influence engineering decisions and identify cost optimizations through multi vendor strategies and roadmap optimization.
• Oversee product qualification in partnership with Hardware engineering to influence architecture decisions and vendor selection. Drive quality improvements, RMA terms, AFR metrics and supplier corrective actions.
• Work closely with engineering to influence hardware architecture decisions and vendor selection. Partner with capacity planning, supply planning and DC operations to understand deployment needs / timelines. Collaborate with finance on cost forecast and CapEx modeling.

Skills

Systems Thinking

Cross-functional Communication

Stakeholder Management

Hardware Infrastructure

Education

Bachelor's degree in Supply Chain Management, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related field

Job description

LinkedIn is seeking a Commodity Manager / NPI lead to drive sourcing strategy and cost management for our datacenter hardware portfolio. You will collaborate with engineering, capacity planning, and finance to secure reliable, scalable infrastructure and optimize spend at scale.

You will own negotiations, supplier relationships, and lifecycle management from concept through EOL, influencing hardware architecture and roadmap decisions to ensure availability and cost efficiency.